Tuesday, May 17, 2011

How to make French Macarons

I have another recipe to share with you guys this week and I'm quite excited about this one! Today I'll walk you through how to make French Macarons. (By the way, refer to the pronunciation guide on this page if you're interested). So here we go!

Measure out one cup of icing sugar and sieve into a large mixing bowl. Add 3/4 cup of ground almonds and combine in a food processor until mixture becomes fine.

Using another bowl separate eggs then beat the whites until soft peaks form. Add 1/4 cup of caster sugar to the mix and continue to beat.

Add one teaspoon of essence to the mixture and one teaspoon of food colouring and continue to mix until colours are thoroughly blended through

Combine the dry and wet mixtures and fold with a spatula until you reach a "lava" like consistency.

Using a cup (or something small and circular) draw round shapes on your baking paper so that your macarons will be evenly shaped. Add your mixture to the piping bag and pipe onto the tray. Leave this to sit for 30 minutes until a shell forms on the top. Then bake for 15-20 minutes at 160°

For the filling we made a buttercream icing and added jam then piped it onto the baked macarons.

And there you have it! They should have a firm shell on the outside and when you bite into it the inside will be soft and gooey. Enjoy!

Edit: Just to clarify, I am no baker at all. This was actually a recipe taught to me by my master baker friend Melissa from From Me to You. All credit goes to her for teaching me how to make these and for being patient with all my questions and queries. Here's to learning new things!

I love cooking and baking and do it quite often. However, I've always been so terrified to do attempt making macarons. You make it look so simple and they look soooo delicious. I think I might just brave trying your recipe :)

One may find it helpful to add 2 extra steps to the process:1. aging the egg whites over night in a bowl covered with a towel to get rid of extra humidity.2. "macaronnage" bis: use a pastry scrapper to press down a dozen times the already mixed batter to release extra air trapped in it, prior to pipping out. Check this video about this key step:http://video.stv.tv/bc/entertainment-thehour-20110214-cooking/

They turned out so well! I've tried making them twice and on both occasions they were a major fail. I think it had something to do with it being summer and humidity affecting the mixture. Am keen to try it now that the weather has cooled down though! Third time's a charm, right?